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Massive Ausra solar manufacturing plant open in Nevada

LOS ANGELES - 2 July 2008 - Solar thermal power developer Ausra on Monday officially opened its first U.S.-based manufacturing plant for reflectors and other components of utility-scale solar power plants.Ausra says that once the plant gets to full production in a couple of years it will be the largest plant making solar thermal power components in the world.

The opening in Las Vegas, Nevada, near the McCarran International Airport, featured Nevada Sen. Harry Reid, the U.S. Senate majority leader who wants to keep nuclear power out of the state and keep coal-fired power plants from expanding.

Church buys energy monitors for congregation

24 June 2008, LONDON - A church in Cheltenham is bulk buying energy monitors in a drive to shrink the carbon footprint of its congregation.Bethesda Methodist Church, which recently received it's second 'Eco-Congregation Award', is buying in the Owl energy monitors for churchgoers, which help reduce electricity consumption by enabling users to see exactly how much they are spending at any given moment.

Owl wireless energy monitors were launched to the UK market in September 2007, and enable users to see their usage through an easy to read portable monitor unit which can be placed anywhere in the home.

2010 solar grid parity predicted

25 June 2008, San Diego - With the photovoltaic industry growing at a compound annual growth rate of 40 percent through 2010, iSuppli Corp. is projecting that the global production of PV cells will reach 12GW by 2010, up from 3.5GW in 2007. To reach that figure, as many as 400 production lines with at least 1MW of PV cell production per year will be established, a four-fold increase from about 90 to 100 production lines in existence at the end of 2007, iSuppli said. Importantly, iSuppli sees the number of 1GW scale fabs to grow as part of the photovoltaic industry's cost reduction strategies.
"The market for PV cells is estimated to grow by 40 percent annually until 2010, and 20 percent beyond," said Dr. Henning Wicht, Senior Director and Principal Analyst, MEMS and photovoltaics, for iSuppli. "Nearly all market participants plan to increase their sales by a Compound Annual Growth Rate of 40 to 50 percent during the next few years."

The need for a four-fold increase in the number of production facilities will require PV manufacturers to spend an average of $500 million or more on each facility. The result will be the need for as many as 1,000 employees per facility. Annual revenues per fab will top $1 billion, according to Dr. Wicht.

Thin Film Solar 99% less silicon and less embodied energy

25 June 2008 Tokyo - JAPANESE ELECTRONICS MANUFACTURER Sharp says it plans to provide at least some of the power for its new solar panel factory from its own solar panels fitted to the roof.Teaming up with local power plant Kansai Electric, Sharp reckons its roof panels could, in the early stages, produce about nine megawatts of power, increasing to about 18 megawatts soon after. 18 megawatts would probably account for around five per cent of the plant's total energy consumption, which is not incredible, but it's a good start.

Sharp's plant, aptly set up in Sakai City, near Osaka, in the land of the rising sun, is apparently costing $69 million to build and should be producing 480 megawatts worth of cells per year by start of production in March 2010. It will specialise in thin-film type solar panels which use only one per cent of the silicon needed for regular crystalline-type panels.

German town mandates solar

24 June 2008, BERLIN - Solar panels will soon grace the roofs of the quiet medieval town of Marburg under a controversial new law forcing owners of all new or renovated buildings in its limits to include solar panels, setting a national precedent.

A coalition of Social Democrats and Greens passed the ruling late on Friday to counter climate change and soaring energy prices. Anyone failing to comply will face a Euro 1,000 fine.

Passive Solar Mobile kiln demonstrated

June 21, Oregon - Oregon State University has gone on the road to show small-scale timber growers and handlers how they can save money drying small lots of wood.All it takes is a partnership with the sun, in a passive sort of way.

For several years OSU forestry extension has been touring Oregon with a portable, passive solar dry kiln.

GM suspends work on SUVs

JUNE 22, 20008 - DETROIT: Amidst the onslaught of surging fuel prices, General Motors, the world's largest automotive manufacturer, has stopped a project to overhaul its gas-guzzling fleet of sport utility vehicles and trucks, the company said.Instead, the company will focus on developing cars that promise improved fuel economy, Bloomberg financial news service reported Thursday.

Trucks account for more than 60 per cent of GM's annual US sales and generate more profit than cars, and the move was called "hugely significant" by one analyst.

World Environment Day - Brendan Condon's address

Brendan Condon - Managing Director of Climate Positive's World Environment Day address at the St Kilda Town Hall

Part 1

German solar competitive by 2014

08 June 08, FRANKFURT - The chief executive of Germany's Q-Cells (QCEG.DE: Quote, Profile, Research), the world's largest solar cell maker, said on Sunday he believed that solar energy could be competitive without subsidies in Germany by 2014."My assessment is that we can talk about 2014," said Anton Milner in an interview with Sunday paper Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung
(FAS).

He also said that the Italian and Spanish markets could perhaps reach that goal as early as 2011 or 2012, as production costs of conventional thermal energy were rising due to increasing environmental costs, and in line with record oil.

Warming threat to ice sheets worldwide

June 10, 2008 With climate change threatening to melt the world's ice sheets and cause devastating flooding, glaciologists have their work cut out for them, explain Tavi Murray, Ian Rutt and David Vaughan.Planes travelling from Europe to the west coast of the US usually fly directly over Greenland. Most passengers miss it, but if you have a window seat and keep watch at about the time that the dinner trays are being cleared away, then you may be lucky enough to catch a glimpse of a truly majestic landscape in which massive glaciers, fed from a vast and featureless ice sheet, spill into iceberg-choked fjords. Although your plane will be thousands of metres overhead, these remote glaciers are nonetheless feeling the impact of human activities like air travel. As the temperatures over Greenland rise as a result of climate change, the speed at which many of these glaciers are moving is increasing so rapidly that more ice is being lost from the ice sheet than is being replaced by new snowfall. In other words, the ice sheet is giving up its mass to the oceans, and, as a result, sea levels are rising.

The rate of sea-level rise has startled both scientists and
policy-makers enough to make headlines and become embedded in government and international reports. It is easy to see why they are concerned - even a half-metre rise would cause flooding that would affect hundreds of millions of people in low-lying areas. Suddenly, "glacier dynamics" - the physics that controls how fast glaciers flow - has become a subjects of international importance.